i got a 2800+ xp and 9800 pro 128mb. I plan to upgrade this summer. should i get a athlon 64 or a 9800 xt? the 9800 xt has 256mb of ram and has nice ocing properties. or will the athlon 64 be a better choice?

Originally posted by The_One Absolutely no point in upgrading your graphics card.

I also see little value in upgrading to a 64 bit processor - far too early to make the jump to 64.

Hang on to your pennies, wait for the new technology to become mainstream, wait for price drops - then buy.

You'd be wasting your money if you upgraded right now - you simply wouldn't get much extra bang for your buck...

But isnt there always something to wait for? if you always look at it that way you would never upgrade.

if its for gaming (I guess it is) I would upgrade the graphics, prossecor speed makes less diferance for gaming than the graphics card, just look at the min system spec on games now, I havn't seen anything that needs a huge prossecor speed, just RAM and graphics card.

"But isnt there always something to wait for? if you always look at it that way you would never upgrade."

No...you wait for something new to come out (say a 64-bit CPU) and then when it becomes mainstream, buy it then. Even though just as it becomes mainstream something new will come out the new thing will NOT be mainstream.

So you buy stuff once they become the norm, if you buy it when it's brand new you're gonna get the bad side of it all, little support, little benefit and a bigger hole in your bank account than you needed to.

Originally posted by WadeV1589 "But isnt there always something to wait for? if you always look at it that way you would never upgrade."

No...you wait for something new to come out (say a 64-bit CPU) and then when it becomes mainstream, buy it then. Even though just as it becomes mainstream something new will come out the new thing will NOT be mainstream.

So you buy stuff once they become the norm, if you buy it when it's brand new you're gonna get the bad side of it all, little support, little benefit and a bigger hole in your bank account than you needed to.

Thanks, that's exactly what I said jon_hill987.

With reference to the exact kit kingdomwinds is after, I would really discourage him to upgrade right now. The 9800XT is not worth it anyway, and the majority of people "in the know" would recommend you buy a 9800 Pro instead - which is what you already have. Quite why you'd want to upgrade that now, anyway, is beyond me. To be honest, there's nothing worthwhile upgrading to. And as for the new Athlon 64s, steer clear for now. 64 bit technology is in its relative infancy, and there is practically no software on the market currently to take advantage of the new features. Besides, even if there was, the Athlon 64 is the first revision of AMD's new 64 bit technology, and as any seasoned hardware buyer will tell you - never buy the first revision! Same applies to the friendly price tag attached to the new P4 Prescotts - it may sound good, but it delivers little in the way of acceptable performance.

As I said before, hang on to your money, and maybe have a look at the market in 6 months time. Right now, I don't really see much point in upgrading, considering you have a pretty powerful system already. If you really had to upgrade, I'd get a nice new 875PE motherboard, with a top of the line Northwood chip, and that would be (arguably) worth it. But with the kit you have your eye on, no way.

I'm with 'The_One'...the most mis-understood part of the PC, the motherboard; get yourself a good motherboard and watch global system performance increase.

For an example, I recently got an Abit NF7-S 2.0 (revision 2 not 1 you see!) and as a result I got SATA which has given me 20-30mb/s increase in read/write speed, memory bandwidth has gone up more than I realised it could; graphics performance has gone up and it has allowed me to overclock both my memory and CPU to much higher speeds without crashing.